SPOTTED – Holden FC ute – King of the Ratters

At Garage of Awesome, we like ratted cars, but there‘s an art to it. While three cans of matt-black and some flappers may make it a bit of a ratter, the only tried and true method is to get a car then stick in somewhere for 40 years. In the weather and ignore it.

As long as they’re good mechanically and don’t leave you stranded while trying to elegantly talk your way through a defect station and as long as their chrome is pretty straight and as long as they are evenly aged, then time is the best tool.

This brings us to this glorious FC Holden spotted at Victor Harbor over summer. And this wasn’t at some rat-rod car show or in a junk yard; this was down the beach, having towed the owner ‘s small yacht from the far reaches of the northern end of greater Adelaide to Victor Harbor which is pretty much as south as you can get while still being dry.

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The owner said it was just a great, reliable car and that he may get around to painting it one day. We have to admit though, if it were ours, we’d lose the RM Williams sticker, polish up the chrome and replace the tail lights, and then do precisely nothing else.

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Every blemish, every dent and every speck of sunburned, flakey paint tells a story. Cars can always be restored, but they are only original once.